Obama manager: Let’s kick some a–

The Obama field campaign is back, aiming to be bigger than it was in 2008, putting special emphasis on women and Latino voters, and anticipating an “incredibly, incredibly competitive” 2012 presidential race.

The message was delivered by campaign brass Monday night in a cross-country conference call to hundreds of field staff who worked in ’08: SeattlePI.com was able to listen in — uninvited — while senior officials briefed their veterans.

President Barack Obama on a 2010 campaign visit to Seattle. He has been back twice since.

The call came as a new New York Times/CBS News poll recorded a drop in Obama’s job approval ratings, and only paper-thin leads over battered Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

But the Obama campaign has been setting down roots in places where the Republican presidential field has already come and gone. “As soon as the Republican primary is over, they pick up and leave,” said veteran organizer Mitch Stewart.

In the past week, Obama offices have opened in Pensacola, Fla., and Las Vegas — states from which the Republicans have departed — and held a “team meeting” for women in Richmond, Virginia, capital of a state which held its primary last Tuesday. Six hundred “team leaders” met over the weekend in Ohio, which just had its primary.

“A gigantic infrastructure is already in place,” Stewart boasted, while predicting the fall presidential race will be “incredibly, incredibly competitive.”

Its prime targets are women voters: Obama won women by a 13-point margin in 2008, and Republicans’ war on contraception and reproductive rights appears to be alienating independent women voters.

“One of the most crucial demographic groups we are communicating with is women . . . We are going to be doing heavy mail to about one million women in battleground states,” said Buffy Wicks, who heads Obama’s get-out-the-vote effort and served as deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

The immediate aim is a “Women’s Week of Action” later this month. A Nurses for Obama group will announce its presence. Women will be told the benefits of the Affordable Health Care Act, lampooned by Republicans as “Obamacare.”

One fact drives home the scope of what Obama’s organization has already put together. Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in Sea-Tac recently, boasted of having 175,000 donors, ahead of his competitors.

“1.3 million people have already given us dollars and already own a piece of this campaign,” said Messina. As to those who worked in 2008, he added: “You own a piece of this so we look forward to working with you.”

But there came a warning: “If we don’t do our jobs, somebody else will be celebrating on election night.”